The Chase

The sorority votes her out; her brother finds a different roof

Summer Heyward-Di Laurentis arrives at Briar University expecting to move into the Kappa Beta Nu house—her mother and grandmother both held the chapter presidency.

The sorority votes her out; her brother finds a different roof

Summer Heyward-Di Laurentis arrives at Briar University expecting to move into the Kappa Beta Nu house—her mother and grandmother both held the chapter presidency. Instead, the sorority's standards committee rejects her on the spot, citing the incident that got her expelled from Brown: a fire at the old Kappa house that branded her an accidental arsonist. Homeless on New Year's Eve, Summer calls her older brother Dean, a former Briar hockey player now teaching in New York. He invites her to a party in Brooklyn, where his old teammates will be—including Colin Fitzgerald, the tattooed, brooding hockey player she's been crushing on since they met the year before. Dean also hatches a plan: his old townhouse in Hastings needs a fourth roommate. Summer might have just found a home among three hockey-playing strangers.

Fitz calls Summer 'fluff,' then watches another man kiss her

At the Brooklyn bar, Summer works every angle—teasing Fitz about his refusal to dance, stealing sips of his beer, leaning close enough that her perfume makes him dizzy. He's drawn to her despite himself. His friend Garrett pulls him aside and encourages him to go for it. Fitz almost agrees, but then the old defenses kick in: she's a sorority girl, a party girl, surface level. He dismisses her as fluff and lists every reason she's wrong for him. He doesn't know Summer has walked out of the restroom and heard every word. Devastated, she turns toward the exit—but stumbles into Hunter Davenport, Fitz's handsome roommate. When the countdown hits zero, it's Hunter's mouth that finds hers. Fitz watches from across the room.

A grudge and a fantasy novel make roommates of enemies

Two weeks later, Summer moves into the townhouse while the guys are away on a secret ski trip. When they return, her greeting to Fitz is frosty—she knows what he thinks of her, even if he doesn't know she knows. Hunter flirts openly. Hollis provides harmless comic relief. The first real collision happens at one a.m. in the kitchen: Summer in a see-through T-shirt, Fitz shirtless and sketching. They discover a shared love of the Shifting Winds fantasy series, but when Fitz can't hide his surprise that she's read the dense books, Summer's insecurity detonates. She accuses him of thinking she's illiterate and storms off. Meanwhile, she befriends Brenna Jensen, the hockey coach's sharp-tongued daughter, who becomes her closest confidante about Fitz, Hunter, and everything tangled between them.